# Elasticsearch service fails immediately after start

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [January 24, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885 "2018-01-24T15:33:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ivan\_p](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c2a13f/32.png) [@ivan\_p](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ivan_p)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885/1 "2018-01-24T15:33:49Z")

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Hi folks,

The title describes the essense of my problem pretty much. I'm running ES 5.5.2 on a VM with Ubuntu 16.04 (it's VirtualBox 5.2.6).

All files in the `/var/log/elasticsearch` directory are empty.

`journalctl -u elasticsearch` shows pairs of lines like

```
Jan 24 15:13:57 ivan-VirtualBox systemd[1]: Starting Elasticsearch...
Jan 24 15:13:57 ivan-VirtualBox systemd[1]: Started Elasticsearch.

```

which I guess correspond to my attempts to run the service.

`sudo service elasticsearch status` shows

```
● elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/elasticsearch.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Mi 2018-01-24 15:13:59 CET; 23min ago
     Docs: http://www.elastic.co
  Process: 7236 ExecStart=/usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch -p ${PID_DIR}/elasticsearch.pid --quiet -Edefault.path.logs=${LOG_DIR} -Edefault.path.data=${DATA_DIR} -Edefault.path.conf=${CONF_DIR} (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 7227 ExecStartPre=/usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch-systemd-pre-exec (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 7236 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jan 24 15:13:57 ivan-VirtualBox systemd[1]: Starting Elasticsearch...
Jan 24 15:13:57 ivan-VirtualBox systemd[1]: Started Elasticsearch.

```

I'm using java 8 by Oracle. I tried also to purge it and install OpenJDK, but got exactly same behavior.

I also set `chown -R elasticsearch:elasticsearch` for directories `/var/log/elasticsearch`, `/var/lib/elasticsearch`, `/var/run/elasticsearch`, `/etc/elasticsearch`.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ivan\_p](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c2a13f/32.png) [@ivan\_p](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ivan_p)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2018, 4:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885/3 "2018-01-24T16:27:23Z")

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@lauea, sorry, not sure to understand how I can use the image to solve my ES issue.

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**Author:** ![lauea](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/lauea/32/26743_2.png) [@lauea](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lauea)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 1:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885/4 "2018-01-25T01:03:43Z")

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@ivan_p Sorry, I replied wrong topic.

If more log information of es you can provided. Only `service elasticsearch status` is extremely lack.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ivan\_p](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c2a13f/32.png) [@ivan\_p](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ivan_p)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2018, 1:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885/5 "2018-01-26T13:17:47Z")

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@lauea, I wish I could provide more info, but as I wrote, all ES log files are empty ☹

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lauea](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/lauea/32/26743_2.png) [@lauea](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lauea)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2018, 3:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885/6 "2018-01-26T15:30:09Z")

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@ivan_p  
here to clarify:

1. How to start the es by you? What's the command?
2. After you started a while, you can try to run below command to check response:

```bash
curl localhost:9200

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ivan\_p](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c2a13f/32.png) [@ivan\_p](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ivan_p)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 11:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885/7 "2018-01-30T11:17:10Z")

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I was starting it by `sudo service elasticsearch start`.  
Also, I checked whether any process was listening the 9200 port. Nothing was there.

However, I actually managed to find a workaround for this problem. I upgraded ES from 5.5.2 to 5.6.6, and it started working just fine. Still no clue what the original issue was.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2018, 11:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-service-fails-immediately-after-start/116885/8 "2018-02-27T11:17:16Z")

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